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'Burning' salt water?

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Heiders

Tue Sept 18 2007, 01:28PM

Registered Member #268 Joined: Tue Feb 28 2006, 02:44AM
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 48

Hello again you lot! I haven't been here in ages. My dad sent me this and I haven't the foggiest if it is even possible. So of course, I thought of you guys. I didn't see anything recent about it, but if I'm duplicating then lock 'er up. This is a decomposition reaction, so I put it in chemistry, but it may be better off in the EM radiation section. If needed, move it please, mods!

This guy says he has managed to burn salt water by aiming an RF generator at it, which separates the hydrogen/oxygen and ignites BUT only as long as it is exposed to the generator. He hasn't published anything yet as far as I found (which was a bunch of newspapers all citing the first newspaper to break the story.)

If it is possible and not a hoax (I honestly can't tell, sounds real but if so, hasn't anybody else tried it before?) then is it plausible? How much electricity do you need to run the generator vs. how much energy can you collect from the ignition? Conservation of energy tells me you can't get more energy in than out, and he says he is releasing the H and O and then bonding them again. I can't see this producing net positive energy.

But, I'm a skeptic. Here's a video, gets interesting around 1:40 (the video counts down time left)

thedatastream

Tue Sept 18 2007, 02:16PM

Registered Member #505 Joined: Sun Nov 19 2006, 06:42PM
Location: Yorkshire!
Posts: 329

Sounds worryingly familiar -

EDIT: Hang on, what am I doing in the Chemistry forum? I must have got lost...

Bjørn

Tue Sept 18 2007, 02:36PM

Registered Member #27 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058

Conservation of energy tells me you can't get more energy in than out, and he says he is releasing the H and O and then bonding them again. I can't see this producing net positive energy.

You do know the answer, you just don't have enough confidence in your judgement.

When a person makes claims like that without producing any proper and verified measurements it means that he has no idea about what he is doing.

Marko

Tue Sept 18 2007, 05:09PM

Registered Member #89 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
Location: Zadar, Croatia
Posts: 3145

Hi Heiders

I don't have much about the machine he's using, but it is clear that presence of a conductor causes breakout at thinnest point of conductor with least radius of curvature (in this case it's the upper lift of flask). The 'Flame' is not uniform but pinched in the bottom, and clearly shows sodium-line color.
Such an explanation is much more likely than anything else.

The point is, most of chemical potentials will equalize to most stable and least-energetic, and this *must* happen through billions of years. That's why you will never have a planet with 20% hydrogen and 80% oxygen atmosphere - it will always have an ocean or vapor clouds in oxygen atmosphere.

So such claim is inherently silly, the approach is unscientific and that guy should be avoided.

Heiders

Tue Sept 18 2007, 11:23PM

Registered Member #268 Joined: Tue Feb 28 2006, 02:44AM
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 48

Well, the only explanation I have for my own stupidity was that I had just woken up when my Dad sent me this. Oops. Sorry for the forum-clutter.

According to my brother, who also got the email,

If you crank an RF field high enough you can ionize just about anything, including a bunch of noble gases, and including glass. So while the claim that the hydrogen flame was melting the test tube could certainly be true, it's just as likely melting due to the RF field, and is definitely not anything special. (As a side note, a few weeks ago in Edinburgh I watched a tantalum crucible melt in an RF field - the melting point of Ta is 2996C).

So, the ignition could happen, but certainly no net energy from it. Possible that it was hot enough to melt the glass, but unless he puts the test tube in the field with no salt water, we can't tell.

Marko, what explanation? I feel a little dense today, so if I am wrong then please correct me. Do you mean that the "flame" is just an arc from the water, and the arc is burning sodium?

Shaun

Wed Sept 19 2007, 12:43AM

Registered Member #690 Joined: Tue May 08 2007, 03:47AM
Location: New Jersey, USA
Posts: 616

That's exactly what I told my AP chem teacher when he pulled up the youtube video in class. I said that a using no-doubt multi-kilowatt RF generator to get a flame I can beat with my yard-sale propane torch is just stupid. Boy was he not expecting that...

Conundrum

Wed Sept 15 2010, 06:47AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4059

hmm...
interestingly this could work, if the headset malfunctioned due to microwave interference and sent out a relatively strong signal which went through the grille (which it will at such low frequencies) and intensified the RF field within the oven to slightly above the breakdown point.

the headphone interference is a clue, as it implies that arcing (wideband interference) was present.

now one thought I had is to locate a MW oven with holes in the cavity, and mount a >100mW diode in aixiz module directly over one pointing into the previously located "hot spot".
this would allow the generation of microwave plasma phenomena without needing an ignition source

additional uses include:- starting up absorption of microwaves on normally unreactive substances such as glass, novel chemical reactions such as fusing of dissimilar materials, etc.
see

-A

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